In October 2023, I was crossing 22nd Street in Tucson, almost to the far curb, when a car struck me. I don’t remember it. I don’t remember that day, or the month that followed. What I know, I know from doctors and family: more than a dozen broken ribs, both elbows, a shoulder, a knee, two fractures in my skull, a lacerated kidney and nerve damage that left me unable to hold a fork or write my own name for five months. I was hospitalized until mid-November, then in a rehabilitation facility until two days before Christmas. I had to learn to walk again. In a city that loses far too many people in the crosswalk, I am one of the lucky ones. I lived.

I was not hurt by a speeding driver. But I have spent the last two years among people who were and who buried the people they love because of it. What happened to me taught me how thin the line is between surviving and not, and how much of what happens on our roads is preventable if we are willing to act before the crash instead of after.

That’s why I am writing to ask the Arizona Legislature and the governor to pass House Bill 2417.

The bill is simple, and it is voluntary. A driver convicted of racing, reckless or aggressive driving, or one who has piled up enough points through repeated speeding offenses, faces losing their license. HB 2417 gives that driver a choice they do not have today: instead of losing the right to drive, they can install an Intelligent Speed Assistance device and keep driving within the law. ISA uses location-based technology to read the posted speed limit and works to keep the vehicle from exceeding it. No ordinary driver is affected, and no one’s license is taken by this bill. It applies only to people already convicted of the most dangerous behavior on our roads, and even for them it is an option, not a mandate: choose the device or accept the suspension.

That distinction matters. This is not the government reaching into the car of a law-abiding Arizonan. It is a second chance for someone who has already lost the trust a license carries, on the condition that they drive the speed limit. It keeps them working and taking their kids to school, and keeps the rest of us safer at the same time.

The need is not abstract. According to the Arizona Department of Transportation’s 2024 Motor Vehicle Crash Facts report, 1,228 people were killed on Arizona roads in 2024. Of those, 417 deaths involved speeding; that’s 33.9% of every traffic death in this state, caused by something as preventable as a foot on the accelerator.

HB 2417 is the product of real work, not a bill written in a vacuum. It was shaped through stakeholder engagement and hands-on demonstrations of the technology involving the Department of Public Safety, the Arizona Department of Transportation, Arizona law enforcement and county attorneys, the Administrative Office of the Courts, and safety and industry organizations including the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, Families for Safe Streets and AAA. It is supported by lawmakers from both parties who see the value in addressing this dangerous cohort.

Arizona would not be moving forward alone. Washington, D.C., enacted the first ISA law of this kind in 2024, and Virginia and Washington state followed last year. This year alone, five states — New York, Maryland, Illinois, Hawaii and Georgia — passed super-speeder laws, an idea that didn’t exist in any state’s statute books three years ago. Arizona has the chance to be among the early states to prove this approach at scale, and to lead the country on a problem that kills more of us than almost anything else on the road.

The technology exists. The need is documented. Other states have already moved. I am asking the Legislature to pass HB 2417, and the governor to sign it, so that fewer Arizonans have to learn to walk again, and fewer families have to plan a funeral.

Brian Rose is a Tucson resident and a member of Families for Safe Streets. He was struck and severely injured by a driver while crossing the street in Tucson in October 2023.